Pondicherry

Let us just get one thing clear.  India and France are worlds apart.  Yes I heard people  speaking French in Pondicherry and you can get a baguette and a fairly decent cup of coffee and there is a promenade for evening strolls. There are even pretty churches and bouganvillia, but  you can't fool me.  This is India.  

The French Quarter is "clean and neat".  But "clean and neat" in India.  There are still noisy tuktuks, cows shitting where they want and men pissing where they want, and chai wallas with heaps of hep thriving under their fingernails.  People sleep, cook, deficate, and meditate in the streets.  I am in India. Where else can you get clunked on the head by an elephant named Lakshmi for good luck.  Well in India of coarse.

The promenade does come alive at sunset.  The city begins to cool down.  People migrate to the water's edge to eat ice cream and mangoes.  With candy floss in one hand, kids scramble around the bronze sculpture of Gandhi.  The young entrepreneur with a pump and a pocket full of balloons seems to break as many as she makes.  The sister and brother from Madras are a little drunk and want their photographs taken.  The sadhus want rupees, the ocean wants the moon.

I visit a small gallery along the promenade.  There is a wonderful photo exhibit from a French Photographer of Sadhus and Pilgrims.  I wonder if the gallery has ever been been visited by either Sadhu or Pilgrim.  Now that would be a photograph. I stroll back to my l'hotel and enjoy a cafe au lait along the way.  Ahhh Frindia.